Dark Park

Bits and Pieces (Gale Smale)

Hi Scrubber-Towners and Dark Parkers, the next three chapters will be a medley of news from Dark Park and Scrubber-Town. Up first is Gale Smale.

Gale is the new art teacher at Dark Park High School; DPHS. She's also the acting student counsellor, cos the previous one got the sack  for preaching hell-fire and brimstone to the students. The school needed someone to fill the gap, so Gale is it. No one else wanted to take it on; are you surprised? Actually, we wouldn't have thought DPH would have student counsellors, as the kids there just do exactly whatever they like and stuff the consequences. Hardly any student makes it past year 10.

Anyway, about Gale. She's really flaky and is into all the wanky new age stuff. We hear she's friends with Dr Ina Eppit, Dr Una's sister and a specialist in weirdo diets; also Jacinta the psychic from Around the World resort. Gale calls all the kids darl and talks a lot about the vibes they put out into the universe, which is met with rolling eyes and rude finger gestures. Gale writes those positive affirmation thingies on the board every day and even though the kids rub them out, write or draw over them, she just re-writes them, after taking a few deep breaths and continuing to smile. Her clothes style is all over the place. Sort of floaty and hippy-like with mis-matched neon colours one day, then other days dressing like the teenagers she teaches the next.

In the mornings, she can be seen tumbling out of her battered old green VW car, holding lots of tat she likes to imagine will be used as creative art projects. Dream on Gale. The stuff rarely gets used, cos the kids just muck around and don't do anything.

One day she set up a project for the kids in which they were to work in groups of four; there's only 12 kids in the class. She told them they could choose any theme they liked, but they had to present something, as it was the end of term and didn't they want to pass?

'Nah, not really, Whatever, Bullshit' were some of the responses, but Gale was undaunted and told them that she'd look forward to seeing what they came up with.

As she came out to her car that afternoon to go home, she saw her class of 12 kids in a huddle. She might have known something fishy was going on, but being anxious to get home, didn't pay much attention.

Next morning, Gale and Fiona Fitch the science teacher were walking into DPH, when Gale stopped in her tracks. All across the school grounds were red and pink chalk drawings of pentagrams. Gale clapped her hands together.

    OMG, how innovative. The kids do care about their art project after all. Just look at those lovely colourful stars, Fiona. The universe  is going to be so pleased and it will reward them by giving them an A for artwork.

Don't get too carried away, luv, Fiona responded. The kids here are all into witchcraft, some of it black magic and some not so  bad. Notice how some of the pentagrams have one point at the top and some have 2? That's how you can tell which one's bad. They're lazy little buggers, is all. As usual they went for minimum effort.

   I don't care, Gale said. I'm going to give them all an A, which is likely the only A they've ever had.

   They still won't give a rats, snapped Fiona, as she went into her classroom , always wondering whether she or the kids were going to get blown up in the latest science experiment.

We hear Mr  Alvin Foyle the principal, who the kids nickname Alfoil, was furious and made the kids clean off their artwork at recess and lunch-time. He summoned Gale Smale to his office and issued her with a first warning. He said he didn't want to fire her, as it was hard enough to get teachers  willing to work at DPH. However, we can't help wondering just how long Gale is going to last. Keep you posted on that.

Stop Press:

There's going to be a new singing competition, Nationwide, called Australia Goes Pop. Britney from the Warpaint shop and Suze, Skye Frye's personal assistant, are both thinking of entering. We didn't know either one could sing. We'll all have to wait and see what happens. Should  be hilarious.